News of the Week (March 26th, 2017)

Gun Rights

That Seattle “gun violence tax” didn’t really pan out as predicted
It’s been more than a year since we looked at Seattle’s so-called “gun violence tax.” That ill conceived idea imposed a tax on all firearms and ammunition sold in the city with the proceeds ostensibly being earmarked for gun violence studies. The optimistic predictions of the authors of the tax legislation indicated that the city would take in anywhere from $300K to a half million dollars per year from this action. So how did that work out? As the NRA Institute for Legislative Action reports this week… not very well at all.

NRA will target Democrats who vote against Gorsuch
In a new threat to Senate Democratic leaders trying to harness members in opposition to the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch, the influential National Rifle Association has leveled the threat that it will make sure members know who votes for – and against – the conservative judge they’ve endorsed.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

Saudis Are the Oil Market’s Biggest Losers
The last few years have been difficult for anyone in the business of selling oil, as prices tumbled from over $110 per barrel to a nadir of just $27, before rebounding to the middle ground they reside in today, at roughly $50 per barrel. Bargain crude has forced state producers like Russia or OPEC’s members to cut budgets in an attempt to stop the bleeding, and it’s forced many private firms—especially those operating in relatively high areas like shale—out of business.

Canada’s Oil Sands Looking Like a Smart Bet
The collapse in crude oil price made life difficult for producer the world over, but for those private companies overseeing relatively high-cost operations, the bearish market became something of a life and death issue. Canada’s oil sands are tremendously energy intensive, meaning that it takes a lot of work to get the admittedly massive quantities of crude trapped in the Albertan formations out of the ground. That production is also quite expensive, and the downturn in prices made it unprofitable. But as the WSJ reports, much of the initial investments necessary to get that oil sands crude flowing have already been made, so there’s still life yet for Canada’s oil ambitions.

Effect of Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations on Early Human Societies
During the past 100,000 years, human societies have witnessed the vast change in climate that has occurred as we have transitioned from a glacial period that ended about 20,000 years ago, into the current interglacial period. During the early stages of this period, human lived as hunter/gatherers, relying on a diet that was very heavily weighted towards meat from a wide variety of wild animals, but also included eggs, nuts, fruits and grasses, to the past 10,000 years or less, when agriculture became a much more dominate feature in society and allowed human populations to remain in the one area and create towns and small hamlets. With agriculture came the domestication of many of the wild meat sources.

Keep Calm and Propagandize On
The initial reporting after terrorist attacks these days is often full of hesitation and curious silences. The death toll is usually low-balled and the identity of the attacker is left hazy for as long as possible. So it is not surprising that the first reports on this attack identified the terrorist as merely “Asian.”

This Navy Gun Is One of the Most Amazing Weapons Ever
The Phalanx is an amazingly badass piece of military technology. It’s an automated Gatling gun that fires 20mm rounds at a rate of 4,500 per minute. The Navy primarily uses it to defend ships from incoming missiles.

National

The Hate Group That Incited the Middlebury Melee
Under different circumstances, Alabama civil rights lawyer Morris S. Dees and American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray might have been colleagues, even pals. Instead, Murray found himself in a near-riot at Middlebury College after accepting a speaking invitation from Republican students at the Vermont school. Students and faculty galvanized by Dees’ political organization barred Murray from speaking. They shouted him down, chanted their own manifesto, and pulled fire alarms to prevent him from being heard.

How Neil Gorsuch’s Senate Confirmation Process Compares to Recent Ones
On Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its hearing on the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is confident that the Senate will confirm Gorsuch before the Easter recess, which is set to begin April 10.

The uncomfortable racial preferences revealed by online dating
Unsurprisingly, most “yes’s” go unanswered, but there are patterns: For example, Asian women responded to white men who “yessed” them 7.8% of the time, more often than they responded to any other race. On the other hand, white men responded to black women 8.5% of the time-less often than for white, Latino, or Asian women. In general, men responded to women about three times as often as women responded to men.

Synthetic Brains Made of Superconductors and Light
You have 100 billion neurons in your brain, each one connected to a multitude of others. Every time you think, feel, or move, neurons in this massive network react, rapidly sending, processing, and receiving signals. Through this behind-the-scenes activity we learn about and navigate the world. Well, through our brains and Google.

Double filters allow for tetrachromatic vision in humans
A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin has developed a pair of glasses that allows the wearer to have tetrachromatic vision. In their paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint sever, the group describes the inspiration for their glasses and explain how they work.

Kamala Harris Won’t Vote For Gorsuch Because He Rules With The Law Not Feelings
During the Senate confirmation hearings for Neil Gorsuch, several democrats suggested that Trump’s nominee was unfit to serve because he believes in the Constitution. Seeing as how the job of Supreme Court Justice is to determine the Constitutionality of things, this seems like a pretty bizarre argument, but democrats aren’t known for being rational. Speaking of which, California democrat Kamala Harris says she won’t be voting to confirm Gorsuch because he bases his decisions on the law instead of feelings.

Teen Vogue Writer: “All White People Are Evil”
Everyone is looking for racism in everything these days and yet ignoring it where it plainly asserts itself. Racism is defined by Webster’s dictionary as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.” With that in mind, let’s look at Teen Vogue freelancer Lara Witt’s Twitter feed (which she has recently made private, failing to realize that screengrabs are forever).

International

UK: Brexit will launch on March 29th
The world’s biggest divorce since the end of the colonial period will begin next week, and don’t expect it to be amicable. UK prime minister Theresa May will file the required Article 50 statement to initiate “Brexit” on March 29th. The dissolution of ties to the European Union will take two years to adjudicate

What next for Sinai’s displaced Copts?
Hundreds of Christian families escaped the city of el-Arish Feb. 24 after the Islamic State (IS) and its branch in Egypt, Wilayat Sinai, increased attacks on Copts there. It is believed to be the largest wave of collective displacement in Egypt since the June 1967 war. Coptic families have discretely been experiencing displacement since the Egyptian government declared a war on terrorism in July 2013, but Cairo and the media have taken an interest in this latest wave because it involves collective migration. No official census figures are available on the Coptic population in the Sinai.

Europe Is Eroding from the South
Italians used to look to Europe as a kind of savior: the Italian state was corrupt and inept, but Brussels would set a higher standard, and by loyal support for the EU, Italy could rise above its own problems. These days, the EU looks more like an anchor than a lifejacket, as a recent Italian poll bears out. Not only is the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement Italy’s most popular party, but the combined support for Five-Star, Lega Nord, and Forza Italia—all hostile to varying degrees to the current euro project and to the German vision behind it—totals nearly 60%. That is significant by any measure, indicating a dramatic shift in perceptions that portends serious danger for the European project today.

The suicide of expertise
Americans might look back on the last 50 years and say, “What have experts done for us lately?”

Kafkatrapping
Good causes sometimes have bad consequences. Blacks, women, and other historical out-groups were right to demand equality before the law and the full respect and liberties due to any member of our civilization; but the tactics they used to “raise consciousness” have sometimes veered into the creepy and pathological, borrowing the least sane features of religious evangelism.

The Anglo-Americans
Daniel Hannan, member of the European Parliament and longtime friend of National Review, pronounces the word “democracy” unlike any American politician – and it is not his English accent. American politicians of the Left use “democracy” in the vaguest possible way, as a catch-all for all things good in politics, even the un-democratic and anti-democratic ones. Politicians of the Right use “democracy” with some skepticism, having been taught to emphasize the fact that the United States is a republic, not a democracy, the latter being something that the Founders feared and dreaded and pronounced themselves opposed to even as they crafted the greatest set of democratic institutions known to man.

Explicating “Amy”
Minnesota Senator Al Franken is not a lawyer, but he plays one on the Senate Judiciary Committee. A former comedian, he hasn’t been intentionally funny in a long, long time. He was laughable when he sought to educate Neil Gorsuch on an undisputed issue of statutory construction in one of the cases heard by Gorsuch on the Tenth Circuit. Franken cited a nutshell on statutory construction to support his performance. Franken poured great emotion into the line: “I question your judgment.”

It’s Not Worth Sacrificing Anyone’s Integrity to Defend Trump’s Tweets
Over on the homepage, Rich lays out chapter and verse the multiple political problems Trump’s tweets create — problems that are different and worse for a president than a candidate. It’s all so ridiculous because it’s all so unnecessary. An effective presidency doesn’t require shoot-from-the-hip tweeting. In fact, Trump’s tweeting habits are so far mainly undermining his effectiveness.

Trigger-Warning Tyrants
People like thinking the best of themselves, which is partially why we have “trigger warnings,” “microaggressions” and claims of “taking offense” — so these complainers don’t have to come to terms with the fact they’re spoiled, self-absorbed, tyrannical brats.

Shrugging Off the Liberal “Resistance”
American tourists in foreign countries once had the reputation of believing that if they shouted loud enough the dumb foreigner standing there with a puzzled look on his face would somehow understand what they were saying. A stereotype that Liberals are now mindlessly acting out with the American people with their 24/7 rabid denunciations of President Trump.

Monasteries of the Mind
When everything is politicized, people retreat into mental mountaintops – dreams of the past and fantasies of the future.

Sheldon Whitehouse – “dark money” hypocrite
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse devoted his first day of questions to Neil Gorsuch to the subject of “dark money.” He meant money that goes to politicians and political causes from contributors who aren’t identified.

Civil War on the Left, Part 38: The Beclowning of Science
With the sensational success of the Wymyn’s march a few days after Trump’s inauguration on everyone’s mind (/sarc), the science community decided that it needs a march of its own, because as everyone knows Trump hates science, and as we also know there was no science at all before federal funding.

Why College Graduates Still Can’t Think
More than six years have passed since Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa rocked the academic world with their landmark book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Their study of more than 2,300 undergraduates at colleges and universities across the country found that many of those students improved little, if at all, in key areas—especially critical thinking.

Coyote Gravity
You know the moment. Wile E. Coyote (Super-Genius) has ordered his high-tech equipment from Acme and is busy creating his elaborate trap which will catch the Roadrunner. But while he’s doing this, the Roadrunner sneaks up behind him and beep-beeps loudly, startling Coyote right off the cliff he’s standing on. For a moment the Coyote hangs suspended in the air. Then he looks down. Gravity reasserts itself with a vengeance and he plummets helplessly earthwards, hitting the ground with a puff of dust.